Paradise Raw Water Intake: Fighting the Green River

摘要

The TVA Paradise Combined Cycle Project included a Raw Water Intake structure designed to pull water from the nearby Green River in Paradise, Kentucky. The original plan was to sink a 100-foot-deep shaft into rock, and drive a microtunnel into the bottom of a cofferdam located 335 feet away in the river. Heavy rainfalls and fluctuating river elevations delayed progress of the cofferdam, forcing a change to the design. It was decided to eliminate the need for the cofferdam by raising the elevation of the tunnel into soft ground, and performing a wet retrieval in the river. This paper will walk through the decisions that led to the original design, the change and the outcome.